Possible Directions For Guardians of the Galaxy 2 | Full Page Bleed

Giant talking trees! Gun toting racoons! Sexy green women that mean business! Hollywood’s new super-franchise is Guardians of the Galaxy, and judging by the numbers coming in, Marvel and Disney have another blockbuster franchise on their hands.
I think everyone is delightfully surprised that this film is doing so well, I mean, let’s face it...we were all sort of skeptical at Marvel doing this one. I mean, the comic always had a cult following, but hardly anyone I know grew up reading GotG, including myself.
In fact, I did my best to stay away from cosmic Marvel. I of course, regret that now.
Heck, my first literary encounter with Groot was when he applied to be Luke Cage’s babysitter in New Avengers just a few years ago. And that was just a silly gag...never did I think we would see him become a big screen superhero voiced by Vin Diesel. But here we are! The movie turned out to be one of Marvel’s best, and like that first Iron Man film, it has changed the scope of movies. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.

Oh, another great thing is that this flick has shown that cosmic themed comic books CAN be adapted properly, and that Green Lantern failed because it simply wasn’t good enough of a movie, not because it was too far-out and fans can't get into a sci-fi superhero movie. Guardians is DELIGHTFULLY far-out and doesn’t try too hard to be exciting or funny...it just is both of those things without any effort at all.

Also...the lack of Ryan Reynolds...that helps. A whole lot.

So they’ve established this rag-tag team of intergalactic outlaws in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and have already announced Guardians 2, so the big question is, what’s next?

Well, I have some humble suggestions on what Star-Lord and his crew could go up against in their next movie, and most of them were largely hinted at in this movie!

Oh, and if I happen to spoil some stuff from Guardians for you...well, I apologize. You really need to go see it...it’s the best movie of the summer, GO!

Annihilation

We’ve already been introduced to the Nova Corps, so the next logical step would be adapting the Annihilation miniseries into movie form. And it’s a stellar way to introduce Richard Rider, the Nova that we all know and love, into the MCU.

According to the comic story, Rider is the last surviving member of the Nova Corps and must defend the galaxy from The Annihilation Wave, a gigantic armada led by the villainous Annihilus.

Rider enlists many heroes including Star-Lord, Drax, Gamora and other characters such as Firelord, Moondragon, Quasar and believe it or not, the villain in the GotG movie, Ronan the Accuser! We are also treated to appearances by Galactus, Thanos, Super Skrull and Silver Surfer, making Annihilation one of the biggest cosmic crossover events ever!

In fact, Annihilation and its sequel, Annihilation Conquest are singlehandedly responsible for bringing together the modern version of the Guardians of the Galaxy!

Sadly, that’s the reason why we probably won’t see a direct adaptation of Annihilation. They already took bits and pieces from the story to create the first Guardians film, and besides the interesting idea of introducing Nova as a solo hero, this probably won’t work.

The Kree-Skrull War

Yes, I know, this falls more under the Avengers sequel ideas, but wouldn’t a Guardians/Avengers team-up movie be so much better?

It’s probably inevitable that we’ll see the Guardians meet the Avengers at some point, in the middle of an intergalactic blood feud would be a perfect place to do that, no?

This was one of the biggest (and first) Marvel events of all time and it impacted the Marvel Universe in a big way.

There are many ways they could adapt the Kree-Skrull war. We already know that the Kree have been to the Cinematic Universe Earth (see the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series...that was definitely a Kree corpse), so that’s a way to get The Avengers involved, and even Captain Mar-Vell, if need be.

But do we need The Avengers?

The Guardians of the Galaxy film does a great job of making Star-Lord, Rocket, Gamora, Drax and Groot look more than formidable, so maybe we can keep the Earth heroes on Earth and let these guys handle things? Traditionalists may not be happy with a Kree-Skrull War without the Avengers, but keeping the cast short may be a better move than you’d think. The audience will engage with the characters a whole lot better and certain heroes won’t be losing valuable screen time (I’m looking at you, Hawkeye and Black Widow).

A massive superhero team-up movie IS going to happen, and the vicious history between the Kree and Skrulls WILL be addressed, but maybe it’s all too soon.

Or maybe just go for it. Either one is cool with us!

Ou, La La Badoon

So MAYBE I just wanted to use “Ou, La La Badoon” in a column for ages, it happens to be one of my favorite titles to a story from when I was a kid (if you can possibly get your hands on Uncanny X-Men King-Size Annual #5...it is a damn classic), but the Badoon also happen to have a LOT to do with the Guardians too. So there.

See, The Badoon are a nasty alien race of lizard men that have caused a lot of trouble for various superheroes over the past decades, but most importantly, in the Brian Michael Bendis written Marvel NOW! relaunch, THEY are the alien species that murdered Star-Lord’s mom when he was a kid, and have been warring with Quill’s dad, J’Son of Spartax (oh yeah, spoiler spoiler, we can’t say whether the MCU will have it this way, but Star-Lord’s dad is totally the emperor of a powerful galactic race) ever since.

They also exterminated all of Gamora’s species (she’s the last), sooooo, they are pretty important to the GotG mythos. And the Guardians will be out for revenge.

So, the logical route for the Guardians sequel would be finding Star-Lord’s dad (which is hinted at the end of the film), and going up against the Badoon, right? Well, that’s the problem.

The plan for the FIRST GotG was to have the Badoon heavily involved. Marvel doesn’t hold the film rights to the species, 20th Century Fox does!!! I guess because they first appeared in Silver Surfer #2 (whose rights are also held by Fox), and were featured heavily in that X-Men Annual I was talking about...well, Marvel can’t use them in their movies. Yet.

All this money they made over the weekend counts for something. Send a big sack of moolah Fox’s way and get your characters back, Marvel! Is Fox really gonna use The Badoon? No. They probably won’t. They need to do the right thing and hand the Badoon’s scaly butts over to the House of Ideas where they belong!

We will probably see ‘ol “Star-Dad” show up sooner rather than later, though. And he better be wearing a fancy collar.

Galactus....’Nuff Said

Well, this also goes into the “I must be dreaming” category, because pigs are gonna fly (and that’s not as impossible in the Marvel Universe as it is here) before this happens. But it’s my column...and I’ll dream what I want to.

Thanos is a pretty mean dude and his one scene in the GotG had me giggling like a schoolgirl, but who could be even more threatening? Uh, the guy that eats planets.

And he was part of Annihilation too, so he totally fits in with the Guardians storyline.

Aw, crap. Fox has him too. Enough of this already! Let’s make a deal, Fox. You can let Marvel have its best cosmic characters back...and you get tons of cash and get to stop making horrible Fantastic Four movies. Deal? Deal.

And I’m not saying that the upcoming FF movie will be “bad”...but (how do I put this), I just don’t want to ever see it with my eyeballs? And I like to go about my life pretending it’s not even happening? Does that work? I wanna be positive about things.

Anyhoo. Give us our big purple helmet back. Wait. What?

Adam Warlock And The Search For The Soul Gem

This is the most logical path for Guardians of the Galaxy 2. We all know the Marvel Cinematic movies are slowly and carefully telling us the story of Thanos and his search for the Infinity Gems. We will likely see the Infinity Gauntlet saga adapted to film form in the future.

The Tesseract from Captain America: First Avenger and The Avengers movies is the blue infinity gem (likely the Mind gem, after seeing how Loki was able to alter people’s mind with it), Thor: Dark World revealed the Aether to be one as well (Power gem?) and in Guardians we are introduced to an orb containing the purple Infinity stone (traditionally the Space gem).

In the comics, Adam Warlock was known to be in possession of the green Soul gem in the middle of his forehead, and it gives him his abilities.

Now, Warlock showing up in the Cinematic Universe, has been hinted at, as what looks like his cocoon (it REALLY does) was spotted in The Collector’s possession at the mid-credits scene in Dark World (I’d like to thank my pal and fellow eXpertComics staff member @JustinTotinofor pointing this out to me).

Now, even more interesting *MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD*, in the after credits scene of Guardians, in the Collector’s destroyed showroom we reportedly see the cocoon broken open (I didn’t spot it, so if I’m wrong, sorry 'bout that).

If true, beyond seeing the return of a certain feathered cult Marvel character to film, we were given a HUGE hint of what’s in store!!! Oh Marvel, you so sneaky!

I would love to see the Guardians meet up with Warlock (maybe even fight him, I mean, those gems have a way of corrupting folks), and it would also introduce another very important Infinity gem into the fold. Makes sense to me!

Who could play the pantsless, red caped cosmic wonder? Charlie Hunnam is a great choice from where I sit! Make it happen! But maybe...give him pants. You don’t want ladies losing their minds in the theater. Probably.

Well, that’s what I got for possible Guardians sequel ideas...maybe one of them will be used, maybe none, but what we do know is it’s an exciting time to be a comic book fan, comic book professional AND just simply a movie fan.

And I can finally say that I absolutely LOVED the Howard The Duck movie when I was a kid without ANY shame! I hope we get to see him again in a movie real soon. And maybe he can finally go all the way with Lea Thompson! She’s probably still cute, right? Is it weird that I wanted that and STILL want that to happen?!

I still say that was one of the best scenes in all of movies! Anyway, that’s this week’s Bleed! Peace out!

With his unique brand of humour mixed with die-hard passion and knowledge for all things comic books, Dave Michaels puts his weekly spin on the pop culture like only he can. Each “episode” of Full Page Bleed provides fun, wacky commentary, interviews, recommendations of Dave’s favourite comics, and whatever else his “evil genius” can conjure up. What are you reading THIS for?! Read some FPB RIGHT NOW and PREPARE to BLEED COMICS! FPB is Here...